suffixtriggered

Suffixtriggered is a term used in linguistics and computer science to describe a mechanism in which the presence of a particular suffix on a base form activates a predefined rule, transformation, or response. The term is typically written as a compound without spaces and appears in descriptive or theoretical discussions rather than as a formal standard.

In morphology and natural language processing, suffix-triggered rules govern inflection, derivation, or category assignment. For example, English suffixes such as -ed and -ing may trigger tense or aspect-related morphophonology, while -s can signal plurality or third-person agreement, depending on the word. In some frameworks, identifying a suffix can trigger a switch in grammatical analysis or an application of a derivational rule.

In software engineering and data processing, suffix-triggered logic directs different processing paths based on the suffix of a string, file name, or token. For instance, a program may apply a particular parser when a file ends with .json or .xml, or a tokenizer may activate a specific tokenization rule after matching a suffix pattern.

The term is not widely standardized and is mainly used descriptively in discussions of morphology and pattern matching. See also affix, suffix, morphology, finite-state machine, and parsing.